Page 142 of Unloved

“Shower. Take your time, and I’ll get some stuff to clean up the cut on your face. Okay?”

He nods, finally lifting his eyes to meet mine. “Okay.”

Matt looks worse somehow when he comes out of the bathroom, hair dripping and only dressed in the boxer briefs I left him. He rifles through his backpack where it lies on the floor next to the door, grabbing soft gray sweatpants.

He’s exhausted.

Mazzy Star plays quietly on the speaker on a looping playlist, “Quiet the Winter Harbor” softly serenading us.

“Come here,” I say, calling him to me. I’ve changed and am sitting against the wall on my bed. The lights are off, only the twinkling of the fairy lights glowing as Matt kneels heavily on the bed, unsure.

“You want me to—”

“Lie down.” Another command, soft but clear.

He lies next to me, head in my lap.

I take the antiseptic wipe, ripping it open and pulling it across the cuts on his face. He doesn’t wince, but I do, something like a sympathy pain shuddering through me.

A Hello Kitty bandage, which made me laugh when I found it in our little first aid tin, feels wrong right now, but he lets me put it on the broken skin of his eyebrow without complaint.

Only staring up at me, wide-eyed and in wonder.

“I wasn’t there when it happened,” he croaks, turning onto his side. “And, after… I wasn’t— I was not okay.”

I want to stop him, to ask questions already, because I’m so desperate to understand this beautiful, sensitive man. But I don’t, instead raising my hand to gently scratch his bare back.

“I wasn’t there when my mom died. When I got there, she was gone. And Archer was… We both couldn’t handle being in that house. I came back a week later.

“It wasn’t good, I didn’t want to feel any of it anymore. So I started drinking a lot. And then she was there—”

He closes his eyes and shakes his head, body tightening for a moment.

“Who?” I say.

“Carmen,” he replies, shame coloring his cheeks. “I was… I had a relationship with Dr. Tinley.”

My stomach drops—somehow it isn’t atallwhat I was expecting, and yet it’s not surprise I feel. It’s sickness, because my imagination is running wild. I want to ask a thousand questions, but I hold them back.

I just hold space for him to talk.

“She was my biology professor freshman year, and I was… I was fucked up, Ro. It was so stupid. I don’t even know why—”

He cuts himself off with a hard swallow.

“It’s stupid,” he repeats. “But we just—I never stopped. I was so depressed, and I was drinking all the time. It wasn’t smart, and it’s embarrassing now—”

“It’s not embarrassing,” I whisper, unable to stop the words from spilling out. “You were grieving.”

He nods slightly. “I think that she knew that. And I think it was easier for her, to have me like that. To keep me—but she was married.” His voice turns almost frantic. “She was married, and I didn’t know. I swear I didn’t know, Ro.”

“I believe you, Matt.”

The confession settles him, his head relaxing back into my lap, hair damp and soft against my bare thigh where my T-shirt has ridden up.

“It was embarrassing. Her husband was standing there, and they were fighting while I just stood there, like a fucking child. It’s disgusting and I hate… I hated myself after. I was drunk and sloppy and sleeping with my professor, destined to become exactly what everyone said I would be. The school slut.”

The hateful words are strangled, caught in his throat as he forces them out.

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